


Guernica

by signifying_nothing



Category: K-pop, VIXX, iKON (Kpop)
Genre: Gen, Minor Character Death, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Survivors Guilt, descriptions of violence?, eonnie's famous crossovers, not sure they warrant the "graphic" tag, war references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 18:19:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7117312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/signifying_nothing/pseuds/signifying_nothing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"don't listen to them." bobby and wonsik visit a museum gallery, and bobby remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guernica

**Author's Note:**

> this is another tumblr prompt. i'm sorry it's not happy or sexy x_x

 

                                                                            

 

 

 

Bobby was a fighter. He'd always been a fighter, and that hadn't changed when he'd finally been given an honorable discharge from his military service. Bobby was a fighter but now instead of fighting soldiers with guns, nameless enemies in dense jungle foliage, he was fighting his memory. He was fighting the ghosts that seemed to haunt his every step.

Bobby was a fighter, and Wonsik was his pillar. His defense, his strength, his shield. But there were some things even Wonsik couldn't shield him from, no matter how hard he tried.

The _Guernica_ was so much more horrifying in person than it had been online. Bobby had braced himself, stared at it on his computer screen for hours. He'd wanted to go to the museum's gallery, wanted to see the artwork on display and feel that special kind of emotion that came from experiencing art. The _Guernica_ was so awful, so real, and he couldn't tear his eyes away. He'd seen that bull, that dead child. That broken knife and a candle through a window, horses foaming at the mouth, he'd seen all of the lights go out.

“Jiwon,” Wonsik was saying. Bobby could distantly feel the hand on his arm. “Hey, Jiwon. Jiwonah, listen to me,” he said, and Bobby felt himself laugh, felt the fear in his throat and the shiver of adrenaline making him shake as Wonsik pulled on his arm and suddenly the _Guernica_ was no longer in view. He wasn't looking at the mother screaming over the corpse of her baby but he was still seeing it, so intimately familiar with the smell of burnt hair and gunpowder, the sound of singing turning to screams, the agony of knives and lights in the dark disappearing. He could feel Wonsik's arms around him, but couldn't stop laughing.

Or maybe he was crying.

Wonsik was cooing into his hair, drawing him away. Bobby was sure there were people staring, staring at this crazy man wailing over a fucking _painting._ Bobby knew he was making a scene as he clung on to Wonsik's sleeves and let himself be pulled out into the open courtyard, sat on a stone bench and cradled like that dead child, like all the dead children he'd buried under the trees so the jaguars wouldn't eat their bodies.

“Listen to me,” Wonsik said softly, swaying Bobby back and forth in his grip. “Listen to me, Jiwonah, listen to me. Don't listen to them, listen to me.” The amorphous _them._ The memories of war, the spikes of flashback that made him dive to the ground when he heard a loud _BANG_ and the smell of rotten fruit. The stink of animal meat in the hot sun.

“Listen to me, Jiwon. Come back. Come back.”

Wonsik didn't say, _it's just a painting, you're all right_ and Bobby appreciated that more than he'd ever be able to express. Because it wasn't just a painting. Like the photographs of the Vietnam War, like the photos of the dead soldiers on the beach at Normandy, the massacre at Tienanmen Square and the bombs going off at Hiroshima and Nagasaki it wasn't just an image for Bobby. It was his life. It was his experiences. Dead children, frothing horses, bulls with gore hanging from their horns.

“Wonsik,” he gasped it in, trying to silence himself with a hand clapped over his mouth. He pushed his head into Wonsik's chest, his ear slammed up over his left pectoral to hear his heart beating, a reassuring and rhythmic _thump_ that made his own heart slow, his fingers stop trembling. Wonsik was humming softly, and Bobby could feel that he was being rocked so carefully.

“Wonsik,” he said again.

“Are you okay?” Wonsik asked, one hand pressed to the side of Bobby's head, holding him against his chest. “Do you want to go home?”

“No,” Bobby whispered, reaching up to grab Wonsik's fingers in his. It was their first time out in months. They hadn't even been out to dinner since weeks before Wonsik broke down and all but begged Bobby to get help, because he was destroying himself, he was destroying _them_ and Wonsik had been willing to do whatever it took to make sure he and Bobby could work through this and he was ruining it. The museum wasn't even all that busy, given that it was a weekday and he was ruining it.

“You're not ruining anything,” Wonsik murmured, kissing his head. “I won't be mad, Jiwonah.”

“I need to.”

“You don't.”

“I _do,_ ” Bobby hissed, and Wonsik sighed. Bobby could feel his resistance fall as Wonsik let him get up but insisted on holding his hand, despite how people stared. “I'm gonna—I'm gonna go back in there and, and I'm gonna look at that fucking painting, and we're gonna go get _lunch_ at that stupid sandwich place you like and we're gonna go s-see a movie, we're gonna go on a proper date, hyung, I want—”

“I want you to be whole enough to enjoy those things with me,” Wonsik whispered, bringing Bobby's hand up to kiss it softly. “If it means taking a little longer, Jiwonah, it's okay.”

Bobby swallowed and nodded, rubbing at his face with his sleeve. He tried to hold himself tall when he walked back into the gallery. It took all of his strength not to hide behind Wonsik when the mural came into view, just as horrific as he'd seen in the beginning. For a moment he thought he might be sick, but Wonsik squeezed his hand and Bobby gathered his strength enough to look around at the other people in the room, to look at the room itself.

Like the memorial at Pearl Harbor, the barrier between the viewers and the art was hung with origami cranes and paper lanterns of all colors and sizes. Offerings of flowers left just beneath the velvet-dressed chain and Bobby could see two people, a woman holding the hand of a young man, no more than twelve, who wore a pair of dog tags and tried not to cry. He was wearing a bomber jacket far too big for his shoulders.

Bobby felt his heart squeeze and his eyes too, swallowing hard. The mural was terrible, but worse was the remnants of carnage: knowing that boys father had likely died in a battle, knowing he would never again smile, or laugh, or play tag, or say anything ever again. Knowing that he, himself, had survived when the his unit had been caught in an explosion. Bobby had been convinced that Koo Junhwe hated him, but it was Junhwe to threw his body down, Junhwe who got a chunk of shrapnel to the spine and thigh, who bled out before help could get to them. Junhwe, who told him to _stop_ _crying like a fucking baby and make sure they're okay, fuck Bobby I can't feel my fucking legs, just make sure they're_ _ **okay**_ _._

Bobby would never forgive himself for living when Junhwe died.

With a choked intake of breath, Bobby followed Wonsik to a small pedestal, where there was paper and pens. Wonsik took both in his hands and led Bobby to a bench, sat him down and pushed back his hair, tucked it under his beanie. “Here,” he said softly. “Here. Write something for him, okay? We'll put it on the memorial, then we can go to lunch. I promise.”

Bobby held the sharpie and paper, staring down at it. He thought of all the things he wanted to say to Junhwe, wanted to scream at him. How could he be so fucking stupid, how could he think so little of himself that he'd get between Bobby and Death, how could he die with a smile on his mouth and blood in his teeth, still laughing about how Bobby's face got ugly when he cried, _but it's not like... you're not ugly all the... time, man._

 _See you in hell,_ Junhwe had said, smiling up as he'd squeezed Bobby's hand, as he shook his head and squeezed Jinhwan's hand to make him quit trying to stop the bleeding when the knees of his fatigues were soaked to the skin with it. _It'll be one fuck of a party, with all you assholes._

Bobby wrote steadily, in tediously neat capital letters, before offering the paper over to Wonsik and making a pathetic sniffling sound. Wonsik set it on the steps leading up to the mural and walked back to Bobby, taking his hands and looking down at him.

“You okay, Jiwonah?”

“I'm listening,” Bobby promised, and Wonsik smiled, bent to kiss the corner of his mouth.

“Come on,” he said. “Lets go get lunch. Maybe we'll visit Junhwe later, huh? I bet he'd like to hear about you leaving that where all the kids can see it.”

“Probably,” Bobby said, letting Wonsik lead him out of the museum and out into the sun. "Though you're really the one who left it there..." Wonsik reached to poke his side, and Bobby laughed, the sound breathless and terrified, but bright and alive. So very, very alive.

 

 

 

_SEE YOU IN HELL, ASSHOLE_

_THE FIRST DRINK'S ON ME._

 


End file.
